Of Death and Wrigglers
by AutumnAgain
Summary: 1. Your name is Bronya Ursama. 2. You are seven sweeps old. 3. The Handmaid of Death has just handed you a grub.


Your name is Bronya Ursama. You are a jade blood, which means that it is your responsibility to look after the Mother Grub and the wrigglers in the brooding caverns. You are seven sweeps old, and you have just encountered an adult troll for the first time ever. This is surprising because

Adults have been banned from the surface of Alternia for ages, and you are too young to join the military.

She just appeared out of nowhere in a flicker of rainbow light.

Adults are apparently much bigger in real life than in movies.

You are appropriately terrified. The woman is using her psionics to levitate effortlessly, her eyes flashing through dozens of mismatched neon colors. Her dress is bright green, her lips are rust red, and her face is an unreadable mask. You have no idea what her blood color or sign is, but you know she could kill you effortlessly.

"Here," she says, in a voice that _echoes_. There is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with this woman in a way that even a midblood with no psychic abilities whatsoever can detect. You unthinkingly take the thing she hands you, unwilling to look away from her until she disappears the same way she arrived.

You collapse to the floor, unable to stay upright, and only now do you see what the adult has handed you.

It's a grub

An ordinary, oliveblooded grub

It seems healthy enough?

You take it back to the technically-not-illegal nursery, just to be sure. As far as you can tell, it really is just an ordinary wriggler, and since it isn't sick or injured you release it into the main caverns. None of the other grubs or luscii react to it, but you still pay special attention every time you visit the main cavern. No one notices the extra grub, and you don't tell any of your jades.

The grub continues to act normally. You start to wonder if you dreamed the entire thing.

About thirty days later the adult comes back.

She's every bit as terrifying as she was before, but this time you make note of her symbol, printed in burgundy near her collar. So she is a rustblood, even if her eyes put you more in mind of a powerful gold. She hands you another grub, this one a jade, and disappears again.

Time passes. You rescue wrigglers that are sick or injured, look after your jades, and check in on the two mystery grubs whenever you get the opportunity. A cat luscus takes a liking to the olive. The jade continues to wriggle about. Neither of them do anything to indicate that they are anything but normal wrigglers. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The adult comes back just about every thirty days, always with a new grub. Teal, cobalt, indigo, purple. Your conversations are always short and businesslike, and the fear never goes away entirely, but you begin to adjust. The adult is terrifying, but she has never done anything to hurt you, your jades, the luscii, or the wrigglers. Her visits become less horrifying and more routine.

The seadweller grub draws some attention from your jades, but you feign ignorance when they ask you if you've seen it before. You have her symbol memorized, by now, but you're too scared to look it up. What if she works directly for the Empress, on some secret mission that you'll be culled for knowing anything about? Worse, what if she doesn't?

Even though you aren't as scared of the adult anymore, you live in dread as the days pass. You know full well there's only one color above violet, and Trizza is fast approaching either ascension or death. Either way, you'll need a new Heiress soon, and the Mother Grub hasn't yet laid an appropriately colored egg…

Twelve days since her last visit. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-eight.

On day 31, Trizza officially challenges the Empress. Four hours later, while your jades are in the communal entertainment block waiting for the news to announce the victor, the adult appears again. You're in the not-technically-illegal nursery, with a vague plan of pretending you've been hiding the extra grub there, if the adult does what you suspect she will.

She does.

"The Heiress is dead," she says, handing you an indisputably Tyrian grub. "Long live the heiress."

"Wait," you say, before she can disappear again. "1. Is this really an heiress? 2. Who are you? 3. Why are you doing this?"

"I don't have a choice," she says bitterly, in her thick East Alternian accent. "But she really is an heiress. I did the same thing for her ancestor, and most of the others." She starts to vanish, before changing her mind. "My name is Damara."

She disappears, and you leave the nursery to hear from one of your jades that Trizza is dead, and what will Alternia do without an Heiress to keep Gl'bgolyb pacified?

You retrieve the new grub, and talk about how important succession is, and let them think you hid the new heiress away as soon as she hatched, to keep Trizza from doing something to her. Everyone is too relieved at having an Heiress again to question your story, and you spend the next several hours contacting the other brooding caverns, getting the new Heiress settled, and making sure everything is under control.

The next day, you finally look up Damara.

She doesn't exist, in the official record. Her sign is real, but it's supposedly never been used, not for a single troll in all the history of Alternia. That's not unheard of, but it is rare, especially among lowbloods.

Unofficially, you find her.

There are myths about a woman by her description appearing just before major historical turning points. Rebellions, wars, periods of bloodshed and strife. She is the harbinger of destructive change, and your sources call her the Handmaid to Death.

It should be impossible, no one short of the Empress lives that long, but the descriptions match exactly, and with that aura of _wrongness_ …

You don't sleep that night.

Thirty days later, Damara comes back. You weren't sure that she would, but here she is, holding a rustblood grub with the same curly horns as she has, if much smaller. You have a sudden, terrifying thought that she'll just keep bringing you grubs, and this will be your life right up until you leave the planet or get culled for conspiracy.

"I looked you up," you say. Damara just looks at you, with those flashing eyes. "Handmaid to Death?"

She shrugs.

"Are you going to hurt anyone?" you ask. "My jades, these grubs?"

"I don't need to," she says, and disappears.

"How many more?" you ask, the next time she appears. There's a bronze blood in her arms, and she still feels unsettling but you're almost used to it by now.

"Just two," she says. You frown. There are only eleven blood castes, and this is the tenth wriggler. Damara vanishes again without elaborating.

As expected, the second-to-last grub is a goldblood, with the mismatched eyes of a psionic. You wonder if he'll survive long enough to become a ship's pilot. You can't do anything for the wrigglers once they leave the brooding caverns for their trials, unless they're jades, but you do wonder about them. It's hard not to, with how much effort you put into their care.

You spend the next thirty days fretting over the twelfth mystery grub. It's obvious enough that your jades notice, despite your best efforts. You hope it will just be another olive, or maybe a second gold, but you aren't hopeful. You can think of two options, but both are beyond treasonous, and you refuse to consider them. Surely Damara wouldn't present you with a lime, or…

The twelfth time Damara appears, you barely look at her. You can't tear your eyes away from the bright, candy-red bundle in her arms. The grub is the color of sunburned flesh, irreparably damaged soft tissue, red hot manacles. You have always toed the line, but knowing what's within the law requires an understanding of the people who break them, and you know what happened to the one jade who abandoned her duties to raise a mutant grub.

" _No,_ " you gasp, staring at the grub whose very existence is treason. "1. I can't hide this. 2. I am not a revolutionary. 3.-"

"You have six sweeps," says Damara.

"What?"

"Six sweeps, and none of it matters."

"What happens in six sweeps?" you stammer. The Handmaid to Death stares at you with a look that's almost pity, made alien by her adult-dark skin and flashing eyes.

"Just keep him alive until he pupates," she says. "Please."

You've never heard her like this before, as you stare at the grub that heralds your doom. Slowly, you find yourself nodding, already planning how you can hide Alternia's most conspicuous wriggler until he's old enough to blend in with everyone else. You know for a fact that there are a few candy-red luscii hanging around, because even with the cull-on-sight order for _trolls_ with that particular mutation the Empress never thought to ban it in animals. If you can keep him hidden for the next few perigees, it should be easy enough to smuggle him into the larger Brooding Caverns for his trials, and after that his fate will be out of your hands. No one will ever need to know about your involvement.

You take the grub.

Damara vanishes.

You never see her again.


End file.
